The United States Supreme Court carefully considered the earnest and righteous claims of the City of San Jose in its devoted and single-minded search for the Oakland Athletics and said, “Sorry, I have to go to Buffalo Wild Wings for the mid-morning special.”
And you knew it would. The Supreme Court is a busy place, and lots of things get decided, so if the justices can decide something by not deciding it, well, who wouldn’t call that a good day?
[NEWS: San Jose's antitrust lawsuit turned down, 'no impact' on A's]
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The only sadness here is that we couldn’t get the view of Old Hoss Radbourn as written by Antonin Scalia.
This is what the A’s deserved, though, and the city as well. The A’s ownership grouplet of John Fisher and Lew Wolff didn’t ever want to do the hard work required to change the minds of the 28 owners who weren’t the San Francisco Giants, thereby mooting the Giants’ claim to South Bay territorial rights. They thought Bud Selig would do their work for them. Then they thought San Jose would do their work for them.
In short, if they wanted San Jose, they’d have either engaged the power, or fought it. Instead, they sat back and decided, “They’ll agree with us. We’re swell guys.”
No. They’re owners whose personal portfolios are on the low end of their brethren, and their needs were trumped in the other owners’ minds by the annual revenue sharing checks and the habitual absences from owners’ meetings. They needed to lobby the other 28 owners, hard and often, and had they done that, they might well have won because, in truth, the Giants aren’t part of the game’s governing inner circle any more than the A’s are.
Oakland Athletics
But the Athletics didn’t want it to that level, so they didn’t get it at any level. If that isn’t an actual legal position, it should be.
Now comes the next thing -- figuring out Oakland, and that means waiting for the National Football League to decide if the Oakland Raiders can relocate a third time in 35 years.
You see, the A’s have never wanted anything as much as they wanted actual leverage, and they have traditionally lacked it. There were moments in the early '70s and late '80s when they were more important than the Giants, and a 15-year stretch when they were more important than the Raiders because the Raiders weren’t in Oakland at all.
They have lost the battle with the Giants (who have cobbled together the best 20-year stretch of their franchise history) but having Oakland by the throat is so close that they can taste it -- even if the taste isn’t quite to their liking.
So they wait a little more. San Jose was a pipe dream all along, and Fisher and Wolff must have known that even if they don’t use the pipe. But they’re this close to having their way at long last.
Still, it must gall them that Mark Davis is much closer to getting his way with Los Angeles than they ever got with their San Jose plan. Davis has been working hard to ingratiate himself with his fellow owners, and though it might not ultimately work because Stan Kroenke’s hair is as unconvincing as Davis’ is for different reasons, if the Raiders are cut out of LA, it won’t be for lack of political trying, while the A’s are cut out of San Jose exactly because of lack of political trying.
In short, they got out of this what they put into it. And they don’t even get Antonin Scalia to drop a single, “Jumping Jehosaphat!” on their behalf.